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READING 1 Failure and Success
FAILURE and SUCCESS
Read the following article. Pay special attention to the words in bold. 3.1
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What is success? What do we learn from failure1? When we try something new, failure is always a possibility. In the nineteenth century, many explorers attempted to reach the North Pole by land, but they died trying. Salomon Andrée was a Swedish engineer. He wanted to be the first person to arrive at the North Pole. He knew that travel over land was very dangerous. He had an idea. He thought he had the perfect way to reach the North Pole: by balloon. On a windy day in July 1897, Andrée and two other men climbed into the basket of a balloon. They took with them enough food for several months. When they left, people cheered and waved.
As soon as they lifted off, strong winds hit the balloon. Fog2 froze on it, making it too heavy. The men traveled by balloon for 65 hours. Were they successful? Did they arrive safely? Unfortunately, no. They landed almost three hundred miles from the North Pole. No one heard from them again. Thirty-three years later, hunters found their frozen bodies, their cameras, and their diaries.
Failure is part of all exploration. Robert Ballard, a famous ocean explorer, says that success and failure go together. Failure helps us do things differently the next time. Mountain climber Peter Athans said, “I learned how not to climb the first four times I tried to summit3 Everest.”
In 1914, a polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton, led an expedition across Antarctica. His ship became trapped in the ice. However, he brought the 27 men on his team home safely. The expedition was a failure, but the rescue of his men was a success.
Failure helps us on our next try. Failure is a good teacher. Without failure, success would be impossible.
1 failure: an activity or project that does not succeed 2 fog: a heavy gray vapor near the ground that makes it difficult to see 3 to summit: to reach the top of a mountain Salomon Andrée and Knut Fraenkel look at their balloon after it crashed on ice. The photograph was taken by the third team member, Nils Strindberg.
